New Orleans's New Setback: Fed-Up Residents Giving Up

By SHAILA DEWAN

Published: February 16, 2007

After nearly a decade in the city of their dreams, Kasandra Larsen and her fianc?Dylan Langlois, climbed into a rented moving truck on Marais Street last Sunday, pointed it toward New Hampshire, and said goodbye.

Not because of some great betrayal -- they had, after all, come back after losing everything in Hurricane Katrina -- but a series of escalating indignities: the attempted carjacking of a pregnant friend; the announced move to Nashville by Ms. Larsen's employer; the human feces deposited on their roof by, they suspect, the contractors next door; the two burglaries in the space of a week; and, not least, the overnight wait for the police to respond.

A year ago, Ms. Larsen, 36, and Mr. Langlois, 37, were hopeful New Orleanians eager to rebuild and improve the city they adored. But now they have joined hundreds of the city's best and brightest who, as if finally acknowledging a lover's destructive impulses, have made the wrenching decision to leave at a time when the population is supposed to be rebounding.

Their reasons include high crime, high rents, soaring insurance premiums and what many call a lack of leadership, competence, money and progress. In other words: yes, it is still bad down here. But more damning is what many of them describe as a dissipating sense of possibility, a dwindling chance at redemption for a great city that, even before the storm, cried out for great improvement.

''The window of opportunity is closing,'' Ms. Larsen said, ''before more people like us give up and say it's too little, too late.''

Mr. Langlois, who has repeatedly called the health and sanitation departments, the police and City Hall, said he despaired of receiving any response. In November, the couple bought their first house, and in December, they bought their first handgun.

''My friends here are just the greatest, hard-working, tax-paying people,'' Mr. Langlois said, ''and I think a lot of us are feeling under siege.''

The couple are unlikely to make any money on the sale of their house.

For every household that, like this one, has given up, there is another on the verge. Tyrone Wilson, a successful real estate agent and consultant, said he and his wife, Trina, a lawyer, had given post-storm life a fair chance. But, Mr. Wilson said, at the end of the school year they are likely to take their three children back to Dallas, where they took refuge after the storm.

''We came back, we tried,'' he said. ''It's really draining, and at a certain point you sit down and you say, 'We don't have to go through this.' ''

As a city in flux, New Orleans remains statistically murky, but demographers generally agree that the population replenishment after the storm, as measured by things like the amount of mail sent and employment in main economic sectors, has leveled off. While many poorer residents have moved back to the city, the ''brain drain'' of professionals that the city was experiencing before the storm appears to have accelerated.

Some say the overall effect is negligible. Greg Rigamer, a demographer who has done work for the city, said that the lack of housing had constrained the recovery, but that many residents remained fully committed to the city.

''The pattern in is certainly stronger than the pattern out,'' Mr. Rigamer said.

But in December, the number of houses on the market peaked at a high not seen since the late 1980s, while the number of sales has trended downward since last June, according to data tracked by the Brookings Institution in Washington. Statistics kept by commercial moving companies show a net loss to New Orleans. Employers say they have raised salaries for skilled workers.

One oft-cited survey by the University of New Orleans found that a third of residents, especially those with graduate degrees, were thinking of leaving within two years.

Susan E. Howell, who conducted the survey, cautioned that the sample was small and that the poor were underrepresented. There are indications that low-income New Orleanians -- those who will need the most help from a cash-strapped city --are making their way back, despite a lack of affordable housing, piling into relatives' homes and trailers.

U-Haul, the rental company that is more affordable than commercial movers, has had more inbound trucks than outbound, according to the company's records, and the number of public school children and new applications for food stamps in Orleans Parish are rising. In Houston, a task force that helps Hurricane Katrina residents resettle has paid more than $1 million in moving expenses for 350 families returning to New Orleans.

''This is a serious problem for the city, because one of the things we had pre-Katrina was the lack of an educated population,'' Dr. Howell said. ''We had too many people at the low end and not enough at the high end, and Katrina sort of fast-forwarded that trend.''

Because many poorer people have taken longer to return, they have not dealt with as many months of frustration as families with higher income and more mobility, so their staying power has yet to be determined.